Everything in here

The Single Bag Experiment

Over the last few years, I’ve become increasingly enamoured with the idea of not travelling with any checked baggage and sticking solely to carry-on. There are a variety of reasons:

• it’s easier to travel around town, even if it’s just to and from your hotel
• there is less likelihood that you’ll accidentally forget something
• it is awesome to be able to go directly to security without having to check your bag, and even more awesome being able leave the airport immediately, without having to wait for anything to come off the carts
• based on personal experience, and the experience of others I know, there’s a pretty decent chance your checked baggage won’t arrive at your destination with you, so not much point in bring it anyways

It’s that last point especially that has driven me to embark on this two-week trip with just a single backpack. I know to lots of people this means nothing, but to people like me who tend to like to be prepared for many different scenarios, this is a pretty big deal.

The trick, I’ve found, is to make sure you good stuff. One of the best purchases for these purposes is good, durable clothes. I have a collection of Merino wool clothing, mostly shirts, because they accomplish a lot of things: they are warm when you need them to be warm, breathe when it’s hot, dry quickly so you can wash them in the sink at night and wear them in the morning, pack tight with few wrinkles, and look pretty decent as well. I brought one pair of Bluffworks pants for the same reason. Then the essential toiletries, Kindle, camera, a pair of sandles, a coat and a few other supplies. All of this has to fit into my new Tom Bihn Synapse 25.

In the process of packing, there have been plenty of moments where I second-guessed how little I was bringing, thinking “what if this pretty unlikely scenario occurs?” and being tempted to haul out my suitcase. To those urges, I’ve had two responses to talk me out of it:

1. If you really need, you’ll be able to buy it
2. What if the luggage doesn’t arrive?

And so here I am with everything fitting in the single bag- no long-sleeved shirt (it’s lows of 16!), no second pair of shoes, no computer, no physical guide books. We’ll see how it goes.

(I did cheat a little: I packed a second bag in my first just in case I wind up picking more along the away. Also pictured is my Garfield pencil bag from elementary school, now home to my portable charger/headphones/other small items.)